


Victor and Spoils

by Vulgarweed



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Assault, Behind the Scenes, Character of Color, Chicago - Freeform, Dubious Consent, Homophobia, Illinois, Letters, M/M, Politics, US Senate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the trainwrecky '04 Illinois Senate race, a winner addresses a loser to clear the air. You did not read this letter. Its existence will be denied. It was never written. It will be classified and redacted until the end of time. (Written in the spring of 2005)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victor and Spoils

Please listen to me, A, for once:

Yes, I admit it: at first I thought it was funny, like everyone else. _They're that desperate?,_ we thought. The media loved it from the start – no one's going to forget that footage of the real responsible adults in the party shut out of that meeting, your own ostensible leaders rolling their eyes, throwing up their hands.

But then I met you, and for a moment there, I was nervous. I didn't _get_ you. I didn't get why you thought any of this made sense, why you thought you were offering anything useful to anyone, who you thought was going to flock to your banner and gather at your feet while you rolled out your glorious, pointless, sound-and-furious monologues. I didn't get the fire and brimstone inside you, I didn't get where all that lava of hate came from, and I admit I was irrationally afraid of those eyes of yours that always seem to be about to escape the constraints of your face and do some deed of violence all by themselves.

I was short-sighted too. I mostly thought, 'How the hell am I going to debate _this?'_

Then I saw your daughter backstage - the look on her face when she doesn't think anyone is watching her. The resemblance is uncanny. She looks exactly like you would if you were a beautiful young woman. That is, a beautiful young woman who's having little pencil-sharpening shards trimmed off her soul every time she stands there and listens to that, working for her father's campaign while he speaks at great passionate length to cheering bloodthirsty crowds about just how wicked and selfish and immoral and hell-bound people like her are.

I remembered how I feel when one of my little ones skins her knee and cries. I want to kiss it better, I want to give her rainbows, I want to beat up the sidewalk that hurt her.

You can stand up there as long as you like listing all the things you don't have in common with me, how I don't have the moral clarity to hate sin as much as you do. Feel free. I admitted to myself I didn't have to try to empathize with you anymore. All that bipartisan, across-the-aisle, handshakey, trade-off work that's so important in real politics? Out the window with you. I would still do it if I could, but I realized it's simply not possible.

I shook hands with you because I had to, and I smiled because I'm good at that, and I saw what that one touch flared up in you, and the way you looked at me — involuntary, I know, but you thought you concealed it, and you were wrong — made my blood run so cold it just stayed that way.

I know you're nowhere near as stupid as you sound in those short bites and frothy pronouncements, you're just losing it, slowly; you've been playing to the cheap seats so long you think you make sense, and it's fruitless to try to hold up the law with all its intricate mazes and footnoted latticework, complicated and interdependent and fundamentally right but fragile like an ecosystem is, and show you exactly where you're wrong, why the Constitution doesn't support a damn thing you say, why everything that makes this country great and every wise thing that's ever been said about government is a steady rebuke to every bit of self-righteous crap that streams out of your mouth. But even knowing that, you managed to strike me speechless more than once. _Slaveholder position?_ There's no response to that, is there? Except this one - maybe you're right. Maybe so, down in the dark. Taste my whip.

You really had to reach to knock me off-balance, but I knew from that handshake onward I could rattle you with a gesture, with a look, and I knew exactly how, because you showed me. And I shouldn't have, it was unkind, but neither of us had any real stakes in the race itself by this point, did we? (Mayor Daley himself told me I could sodomize a Doberman in the halftime show at Soldier Field and still beat you. He's colorful with the imagery that way. I'll leave the dog-fucking to Senator Santorum, thanks.)

That dart of my tongue across my lips, the random furtive glances at all points of your body, that smoldering look across the podium when I needed you to clarify that latest particularly incomprehensible piece of bullshit? Not unguarded. Not unplanned. Not even unrehearsed. And you stammered – you caught it – you sent it back. You were watching me that closely. And I was watching you, no matter how much it made my skin crawl to see you silently thrashing in your helpless, unwelcome desire – that hunger that you wanted to pretend came from somewhere outside yourself, like it didn't belong to you and how the hell did it get there?

It was repulsive and it was fascinating. I pulled a tiny string and you twitched. The stronger it got, the more you hated yourself; you only got around to hating me with the spillover after you'd completely filled up the bucket of hate for yourself, not that there wasn't plenty to go around. I still don't understand that, why you coddle and nurture it so, because it is such a glaring weakness — it weighs you down, eats at your mind, saps your strength. You knew I was playing with fire and you waited for the burn. You must think about Hell a lot, late at night — full of naked bound men, yes, writhing in flames? Am I right?

I must have suspected that sooner or later that thing that was under no circumstances supposed to happen would happen: you catching me alone. How desperate must you have been to risk that? The pity came back when I thought of it that way. It flashed red up in my mind when my head hit the wall where you pinned me. You'll remember my hands on your back, my mouth opening under yours almost willingly. There was something crying out to me. Something small and angelic and doomed, almost lost in the clash of your teeth on mine and the taste of death on your tongue. But it was real, that tiny voice. It was begging. It almost had hope, and it was so pure it almost made me want you. I have no idea where in your body it was located, if it had a permanent seat left in you at all. Certainly not in your hips shoving up against mine, where normal people seek pleasure but you were full of hate and guilt and rape and murder. Did I seem to submit for a moment? Of course. I think you usually have to survive a plane crash, a gunshot wound, a heart attack, to feel annihilation so close. It is mesmerizing. It is seductive. It is terrible. And it is not mere destruction of the body I speak of where you're concerned.

When self-preservation kicked in, I know it came through me like an adrenaline rush and I shoved you halfway across the hall. I know what I must have looked like, straightening my clothes, wiping my mouth like I just accidentally drank piss. Somewhat real, but mostly theater. We both knew what you had risked. And I knew what you expected the headlines to say tomorrow. The ace was up my sleeve once again.

There never was anything of the sort, of course. I knew that all along; you didn't. I am sincerely sorry for that. But by the one debate we had left, when we shook hands cordially and the cameras flashed and it was all almost over, you must have realized I wasn't going to try to destroy you. Why would I usurp the job you've taken on for yourself?

I'm actually glad you refused to congratulate me. It was never sportsmanlike, not from the beginning. The truth is, Jesus wouldn't vote for either one of us. Not only is He not registered in Illinois, but I really think He's more concerned with the poor and the sick and the abandoned children than with politics and would just as soon overthrow the whole decadent mess we're both in up to over our heads. May you someday feel His compassion, because He knows I can't give you mine.

All too sincerely,   
B


End file.
